That the brain has to filter the world in order to make sense of it is fairly obvious, but the lengths it will go to preserve your sense of ego and core beliefs — even at the expense of facts and rationality — was really quite shocking. A great primer on cognitive bias.

This video featuring palliative care specialist Kathryn Mannix has been our most viral so far. With over 3 million views on Facebook, and tons of retweets, Kathryn’s calm and reassuring description of the normal process of human dying has been hugely popular with the audience, and has genuinely made us feel a lot less scared about death.

A couple of weeks ago, BBC3 star Kayode Ewumi popped into a studio with us to share his top tips on creativity. These included taking a bus to nowhere and the importance of a “vomit draft” — something that looks, smells and feels absolutely horrible, but is the first stage of the creative process. Great fun.

This was one of our early hits on BBC Ideas — Twitter VP Bruce Daisley sharing practical tips about how to relieve the stress and cut down on the interruptions to your day. What I loved about Bruce’s tips was that they weren’t just common sense, they were all backed up by academic research, and genuinely useful.

A lot of self-help on the internet can be patronising, disingenuous and sometimes even dangerous. Author Leonard Mlodinow describing five ways to make your mind more elastic is none of these — he gently nudges you out of your comfort zone, and gives you the incentive to make small, manageable changes that could help you become more resilient in the long run.

Blogger Penny Jarrett was not diagnosed with ADHD until she was 30. At first she saw it as just a negative — like having 40 tabs open in your brain at once. But then she came to realise that actually ADHD has many positive sides, including the opportunity for hyper-focus and (often) a great sense of humour. (I loved her description of finding her remote control in the fridge.) Part of our Life Lessons series with R4 — voices of young UK talking about the issues that mattered to them.

Musician and youth leader Femi Koleoso gave us another life lesson, but on a totally different subject. Femi spends a lot of time mentoring young people. He made a very eloquent case that teaching a young person the violin or a language can be the reason they ‘don’t roll out with a knife that night’. One of our favourite BBC Ideas videos this year, and a huge incentive for anyone considering becoming a mentor.

Making the familiar unfamiliar is something we love to do at BBC ideas, and we really enjoyed commissioning this series on how to win at stuff. Watch this video and you’ll never start with ‘rock’ again.

Biologically, humans and ants have very little in common. But actually we can learn a lot from these little critters. If you feel that you spend a lot of time trying to second-guess what your manager wants, this is the video for you.